By Susan Elise Campbell
White Glove Janitorial Service invites area businesses to enjoy much more than a dirt-free, healthier workplace. According to founder Kris Brunelle, his “grime fighters are cleaning up the community and making a difference.”
The veteran-owned company opened in October 2022 and now has seven staff cleaning offices and medical facilities, as well as manufacturing spaces, dealerships, and gyms. Brunelle also offers post-construction cleaning services and residential cleanup for homeowners moving in or out.
Brunelle is a former Seabee who has “built things around the world,” he said. His career as a carpenter for the Navy’s construction battalion took him to Spain, Croatia, Africa, Afghanistan, and Japan.
After the Navy, Brunelle sold solar systems and then insurance, and while he enjoyed selling and relationship building, he said he needed something different to sustain his family. At the time that included two foster children in addition to their daughter.
“I saw in sales that companies could not always deliver what they promise and that I had no control over the product,” he said.
The way to fix that problem was to start his own business and he chose cleaning services. After all, “there is always going to be dirt,” he said.
Brunelle scoured the web for tutorials about commercial cleaning and watched every video. He also located a company nearby offering a master class that taught him all he “needed to know from the business side of things.”
Military experience taught Brunelle how to lead people. Now as a business owner, he said “the secret sauce is to supervise” and to give staff “the extra motivation to do well.”
“I don’t employ janitors, I employ ‘grime fighters,’” said Brunelle. “The difference is the purpose behind it, which is cleaning up the community.”
“We have better employees than other janitorial services, not because they started out better, but because an empowered and happy employee is a more productive and better employee,” he said.
Staff are paid well, he said, which can affect the cost of services. But Brunelle said that in the janitorial industry, if a client jumps from one service to another, “it is never about price.” It’s about the quality of the service they received.
“If employees are getting the respect they deserve, it will show in their work,” he said.
Staff who perform well receive a weekly bonus as an incentive to continue to take responsibility for their work and maintain quality. Of the seven staff, two are managers overseeing the work of their ‘grime squads’ on site. There are also random inspections by Brunelle.
In the military, Brunelle said that “everyone is doing the most effective thing they can do” for the benefit of all.
“There will always be those who do not have the time, ambition or energy to clean,” he said. “There are not a lot of CEOs out there cleaning toilets because that is not the most effective thing they can do.”
With Saratoga County and North Country businesses expanding during the tourist season, summer tends to be a busy time for White Glove Janitorial Service. Brunelle meets the need for staff by hiring during the vacation months and “trying to keep the pipeline full” so new hires can be retained further into the year, he said.
“I am applying lessons learned in the military by fostering responsibility,” he said. “Then as we get new accounts, staff can train new grime fighters and eventually be in charge of their own grime squads.”
The military also taught Brunelle patience.
“You don’t have the option of firing somebody. You have to learn to get along,” he said.
“It does get expensive to hire and train the janitorial crew,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I do get attached to my grime fighters and would like to keep them as long as possible.”
Brunelle said he was “always a big fan of the dirty jobs.”
“The work has to get done and there is dignity in it,” he said. And he dignifies staff by giving them a career path that is “not the most glamorous job, but it doesn’t have to be a bad job either.”
“I’ve realized that the difference between a good job and a bad job is the manager,” he said.
As a disabled service veteran, Brunelle was able to qualify under New York guidelines as a distributor for a number of brands of cleaning products that he sells online.
White Glove Janitorial is looking for staff and encourages veterans and the disabled to apply.
“We work with CWI in Glens Falls and some of those workers are my best workers,” he said.
“We are getting more contracts and opportunities with construction companies, so we are close to a big hiring push and getting ready for camps, marinas, luxury short-term rentals and other seasonal customers,” he said.
Brunelle is an ambassador for the Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Saratoga County Chamber.
“The Chambers have a saying, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,’” he said. “I have actively worked to bring other janitorial services into the Chambers because I have had such a good reception and there is plenty of business to go around.”
White Glove Janitorial Service currently travels as far north as Chestertown and south to communities between Saratoga Springs and Albany for routine cleaning. Visit 518whitegloveservice.com for more information or contact chief grime control officer Kris Brunelle at (518) 741-8046.